Meteor City
by Cyanidecafe
Summary: "If you can shed tears for your comrade, how can you kill so many innocent people?" A take on why the Phantom Troupe does not answer these questions. ONESHOT


Meteor city

When Uvogin died, the Phantom Troupe mourned for days. His death hung above them like a dark cloud, a reminder to the rest that being a Spider, while lucrative, also meant that they were ready to face death at any moment. The usually straightforward, jovial Enhancer had went and got himself killed and to add insult to their injury, none of them could even locate his body. That idiot just headed out one day and never came back. The ones who took it the hardest were the Leader and Nobunaga; both had shed genuine tears at the loss.

Even if the Leader had always emphasised that no member should worry excessively at the prospect of losing the Spiders' Head, they all knew that whenever a Leg was lost it was the Leader who took to heart the most. He cared for them more than he was willing to allow them to care for him; as much as they were his underlings, they belonged to him as much as he belonged to them. They were a team, a family of sorts if you will, all hailing from the different crevices of Meteor City who had come together and became all each other could rely on and trust. There were no traitors in the Troupe.

People have asked them this since as far as they can remember, even before their Troupe days back in Meteor City, as they scavenged to live like rats, people have asked them this. It is a question they do not bother to grace with an answer though they all clearly knew. For those who had to ask this would never understand in the first place. They did not owe anybody any answers, just as nobody ever answered their questions. They were thieves and they were hated anyway.

" _If you can shed tears for your lost comrade, if you understand that it hurts, how can you so heartlessly murder innocent people?"_

To the inhabitants of Meteor City, it is those that ask this question who do not truly understand how exactly it hurts to lose a friend. Would you cry for just anyone? If someone you did not know died today, would you cry?

So many died in Meteor City every day it was a sight too common to attribute notice to. Could anyone even have enough tears to shed for every life born and lost there? It was preposterous that these people who grew up in clean, proper cities expected tears to be shed for every death in this world; they were hypocrites, choosing to ignore the suffering of the rest of the world only to show pity to the deaths they happen to witness and choose to feel sympathy for. These people had no right to question the people of Meteor City.

Meteor City may be located merely 80km from the closest major city, but it both exists and does not exist. When you set foot in it, it is not difficult to imagine that you have entered an entirely different country, planet even.

As far as the Government was concerned, this area was an empty wasteland, though empty is not a word you would normally associate with Meteor City, bursting at its seams with vermin and refuse. For miles and miles the ground is not covered, but actually consists of all the forms and manners of trash sent to be dumped there from the major cities. That was the initial plan, the world's garbage bin, far flung from civilisation and out of sight where people did not have to worry about how they damaged the planet. Meteor City was supposed to be something nobody worried about and everybody forgot, just like its inhabitants.

At first it was the homeless that gathered, because it was difficult living and being treated like vermin in the cities, some chose to live where they would be spared the cruel gaze of those with homes and wealth among the real vermin in Meteor. Perhaps to them it even was a more respectable way to live, but this was a story only the people of Meteor City can tell.

At first they lived off the rotten and expired food disposed weekly by the trucks, but the refuse that gathered grew and varied and soon they were building hideouts and structures with the rusted husks of what once were large machinery and vehicles. As the refuse grew, so did the population. People thought that was because the settlers had propagated to the point that they started procreating but the people of Meteor will howl with laughter if you suggested that.

At any moment anyone could die in Meteor. All you had to do was fail to pay attention to the hint of a footstep or a passing shadow and you could lose whatever you had scavenged, along with your life. Meteor was not governed by laws or people; in here you could survive if you were strong - that was the only rule. It goes without saying that is the reason why so many of the Mafia's strongest hired fighters come from such a background; fighting and killing before they could even form coherent memories. In Meteor, life was the cheapest thing but you paid the dearest price to keep yours.

Meteor wasn't exactly the place people started families in. Most of the women disguised themselves as men to hide their lack of strength and muscle, although this was a deceptive impression; most of them could kill in seconds. Nobody openly associated with anyone else and words were exchanged in hushed whispers within dark crevices and corners. Because anyone could kill or be killed at any moment, the citizens of Meteor were not of the trusting or socialising variety.

Meteor's population grew with the arrival of the babies. Like the existence of Meteor, these children were mistakes the rich people made and wanted to be rid of; unwanted results of scandals or of mothers too young to bear the shame of having a child out of wedlock. They were children of people who had chosen to prioritise themselves and their fragile lives over their own flesh and blood.

At first the city ignored this and let them die and rot as they had been intended, the stench of death swallowed by odours of the city and their remains buried with the garbage. Some who were particularly hungry helped themselves to the remains. Concepts like right and wrong do not exist in Meteor; in a world that does not bother with laws, of what relevance is morality? Those who knew right from wrong forgot them and those who grew up in Meteor never learned to distinguish one from the other.

The babies were later adopted by various individuals who did so for their own various reasons, perhaps by someone who desired a child, or someone who bred and traded them as currency. After all, no charity in this world is done without purpose. Families did not exist in the environment of Meteor but Brotherhoods did. Brotherhoods forged from bonds of blood and iron; there were no traitors in Brotherhoods.

The people you learned to trust in this city were people who were all you had, who became the only people who you could rely on and you could trust with your life; for bonds formed in this rotting city were not easily broken. They were promises you kept even if it cost your life because these people had chosen to bind themselves to you, unlike the rest of the world which had chosen to abandon you. These were the people you shed tears for when lost because they chose to fight alongside you instead of abandoning you; or like the fragile friendships people speak of, of people who are in your life by a mere circumstance or coincidence.

But it is not to be said that people who come from Meteor do not have hearts; their hearts work differently just as their minds think differently, in a way only the descendants of the elusive city could decipher. It has always been like this; Meteor versus the rest of the world. Not many knew of this city in the first place and those who did spoke of it only in hushed tones and with disdain. Meteor was only allowed to exist and its people only allowed to live because it produced the best fighters the Mafia could hire without having to train. Outside of this trade Meteor could burn and the rest of the world wouldn't bat an eye.

In return, the people of Meteor would not shed tears if the rest of the world burned either. There is a saying that if you turn your back on the world, the world also turns its back to you - only Meteor would say that the world turned its back first.

" _How can you kill innocent people…"_

Nobody was innocent; living in a world which grew fat and turned a blind eye to the suffering of Meteor City, ignorant of children who were born on this very same planet, but were wrapped in black trash bags and abandoned to die in Meteor City. Nobody in this world was innocent of the sin that it created that was Meteor; its descendants haunting them and reminding them of its existence. Some did it for their idea of justice, something had to be done about Meteor and its children. Others did it to remind the world what Meteor was like and what its people could do, a sort of bitter vengeance. After all, it was just taking back what the world had robbed from them.

The Phantom Troupe knew all this, every one of them hailing from a different crevice hidden deep in the decrepit city, every one of them having paid their own unspeakable price to have survived so long and grown so strong. None of them had ever met their parents; none of them ever had parents. What they had was each other and the trust in their bond - that they would never fight or betray each other. Their fighting was reserved for unleashing on people outside of Meteor City, their skills for taking what this greedy world hoards for itself.

Who would believe their story, or understand their feelings? Even when they did, their reactions were always the same - of disdain, misunderstanding and judgment, imposing their ideals of 'right' and 'wrong'. The children of Meteor did not believe in right and wrong, they believed in life and death. After all, all's fair in love and war, and not a single day passes in Meteor City that isn't any less than a war.

The Phantom Troupe seeks treasure and revenge. The Phantom Troupe does not seek pity or the worlds' understanding.


End file.
